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Comment by helsinkiandrew | Hacker News Reader

> Learn how to take a 20-minute power nap without embarrassment

I've found the lockdown great for trying this - a run, lunch then 15 minutes on the sofa. It's like rebooting the day.

Another unsolicited advice, from a 40yo this time: do not use alarm clocks to wake up. The pressure shifts to the evening because you have to go to sleep early if you want to wake up early.

And then it magically happens that you sleep as much as you need. Being a long time supporter of naps I find myself not doing them at all.

Of course this applies only if you have flexible hours to work, don't have appointments, etc.

40 y.o. here as well.

My life has improved after I started getting up extremely early (0400) four or so years ago. And that doesn't happen without an alarm clock.

My point is not to say that you are wrong but that we might be better off trying different solution for ourselves instead of believing in authorities here or elsewhere.

(I'm not saying you shouldn't listen to normal advice like getting good sleep etc, but don't think that getting up at 0400 will solve your problems because eitland says so and don't think that waking up naturally will solve all your problems. Instead try one, then the other if the first didn't work.)

I think the most important point is not so much that you should never use an alarm (I do regularly), but that if you're unsure of whether you actually get enough sleep, it is worth finding out how much sleep you need, and ensure you get it, whether by adjusting your bedtime or your alarm time, or ensuring you compensate every few days.

Too many people don't know how much sleep their body would want if unconstrained by alarms. Once you know, you can get decent results of manipulating when you get that sleep with alarms. But if you don't know it's very easy to be near constantly sleep deprived.

The most interesting pattern I observed in my sleep is the integral patterns associated with it -- it's nearly impossible for me to wake up after less than 3.5 hours of sleep[1], and then after about 4 hours of sleep it becomes difficult again to wake up until after about 7.5 hours, when I usually wake up on my own, and then after around 8 hours of sleep if I oversleep you're probably not seeing me until I've finished a solid 11 hours.[0]

It's extraordinarily useful for planning when I am not getting much sleep. If I must be somewhere at X o'clock, and I can't get a full night's sleep for some reason, I make sure I am going to sleep so that my alarm starts going off when I am at around 3.5 hours of sleep or so. I've missed too many meetings and flights trying to get 5 or 6 hours of sleep. And if I've just pulled an all-nighter and need to be somewhere in 2 hours, I don't go to sleep unless I have someone who can literally kick me awake at the appropriate time, 'cuz nothing else is going to get it done.

[0] Yes, I've read enough about sleep to know most of the details behind such sleep rhythms.

[1] Well, having children does change that a bit, but a beep-beep-beep isn't going to get the job done.

I recently did a stint of waking at 0500 to work on my side projects. This was a big transition from waking at 8:15 and hitting the sack after midnight. But getting the important stuff sorted early and having such a consistent routine, including a bedtime routine was intoxicating. Since moving and being in complete lockdown Ive returned to my old ways for various practical and also disfunctional reasons but I look back at my structured early-riser days with envy. I guess I am a morning person after all. Many years of distraction and lack of direction trying to be productive in the evenings behind me. It wasnt ADD it was just not the right time of day! This is coming from a 30 year old.

I've done the same and also reverted, but found it easier in summer (no fear of getting out of a warm bed, plus earlier daylight).

That said, I get by on little sleep and can be productive in the evenings when I know I have more time available if I get on a roll. Wake up at 5am and parents inevitably have kids up and distracting them from 6:30. Work at 9pm, and you can carry on until 3am or longer without distraction.

100% agreed. My life got a lot better when I focused on controlling my sleeping time rather than my waking time.

Although personally, I don't think one needs flexible working hours to achieve it. Once I got my habits and home lighting right, my sleep cycle very naturally became: sleep at +/- 10:30, wake at +/- 6:30. That only works if I stay out of sleep debt, of course. But that's entirely worth it; I didn't realize how much sleep debt was harming my mental clarity until I experienced a long stretch of sleeping enough every night.

Maybe this is just true of all advice, but I think this one's going to vary substantially from person to person. I find that setting an alarm in the morning helps keep my sleep cycle from drifting, so I get tired at the right time at night instead of staying up later than I'd prefer.

This is good advice, but there's a caveat - it will ruin your weekends because you'll be awake for your 'normal hours' then too.

I don't really find this a problem. If I want to stay up very late, I'll take a short nap early in the evening, timed based on how long I want to stay up. But generally I like getting up early during weekends too. Less so when I used to go clubbing, of course, but then napping in the afternoon to prepare worked well. That, and caffeine.

When I had to be on a rigid morning schedule, what helped me was an alarm clock to go to bed.

If only doing the same at work was this easy…

> If only doing the same at work was this easy…

Never understood employers who had a problem with this. I have people scheduling a small conference room we have to take 30 minute naps, or going to their car, or sleeping under their desk. Why should anyone care about that as long as they are generally productive and get the work done?

(probably should note I don't overwork my employees, make them keep 80 hour schedules or anything - a couple of them get up at like 4:30 AM to go to the gym / shoot hoops before coming in, and want to take a nap around lunch before the 2nd part of their day)

Well, there’s one part where it’s kind of awkward to ask to take a nap or have a coworker find you sleeping (“should I wake them up or wait to get my PR reviewed?“) but another part of it is that it’s not really comfortable to sleep at work unless there are ample soft couches or something. At home I can just jump into bed…

Eh I think you can leave someone undisturbed for 15-20 minutes unless it's something truly important. 99% of PRs can wait that long, unless you are working on a production issue (where the likelihood of someone sleeping in the middle of is pretty small anyway).

> it’s not really comfortable to sleep at work

I actually find it easier to take short naps on desk, just cross my arms and use them as a pillow to bury my head into. The position just comfortable enough that you will sleep easily for 15 minutes and then wake up.

On the other hand, getting into a bed I could see myself sleeping from anywhere between 30 minutes to 3 hours :/

Just an added tip, if you don't want to take a pillow to work, use a pack of tissues as a pillow. For me they were the perfect height and I kept on using it even after I remembered to bring my pillow because it felt even better than my raggedy pillow.

In sweden we have a law mandated "vilorum", that's basically a room where you should be able to take a nap. However this is only applicable when an office is larger than x people (x ~50 ?) and is frustratingly often just implemented as minimum effort to abide with the law, like a large sofa that in theory could be used to take an uncomfortable nap. Meaning it's only used in rare cases when you are too tired to even go home (or late at night when an office party has gone off the hooks)

At a past job my solution was to go sit in the local park with mirror shades and my hands in a prayer position... It was far from ideal, but on an estate with plenty of security roaming so felt safe and the hand position is an effective trick to prevent people from bothering you (e.g. I use it also if meditating somewhere public). Unless you slump over or snore, I guess.

Yeah, snoring is the killer. I never had a problem with taking a nap in the office, but I tend to snore, so that gets noticed. Fortunately, last office I worked in, almost everyone was taking a nap at some point during the day (often unintentionally), so nobody gave anyone any hard time about it.

No one really has a problem with it unless they themselves are sleep-deprived and expecting everyone else to "tough it out".

It's also an easy arrow to grab in the event that you're working in a place with sick/corrupted incentives and someone more established can save face by firing you before someone else finds out what you dug up while trying to solve a seemingly innocent bug in invoice generation.

I worked for about 3 years in taiwan and there its a norm. Everyone uses half of their lunch hour for lunch and other half for a nap. By the time I left I had it down to a science. I even drank a couple gulps of coffee because it felt like it kicked in in exactly 20 mins and I felt extra recharged

The coffee-nap is excellent.

It should be; especially big companies have more than enough money to make more accommodations; quiet rooms, noise insulation, comfortable sofas / recliners, etc.

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